Digital Tutors - Character Rigging for Production in Maya 2011

In this course, we will cover tools and techniques for setting up character rigs in Maya.

Step by step, we'll construct a control rig that is robust and animator-friendly. We'll learn everything from proper joint placement and techniques for correcting a joint's orientation to learning fun ways we can preserve volume as our mesh deforms and how to make our controls efficient and easy to comprehend. We'll also learn how to build some fun MEL tools that will help speed up our workflow, bringing that time back into constructing our control rigs with the best methods.

Lesson Outline (68 lessons)1. Introduction and Project Overview2. Prepping Our Scene3. Creating a Renaming Tool4. Building the Left Leg Joint5. A Technique for Re-orienting Joints/Finishing the Leg Joints6. Setting-up Foot Roll Joints7. Creating a Tool that Generates a Box Curve8. Scripting a Joint Curve9. Constructing Foot Controls10. Setting up the Foot Controls/Rigging the Toe Bend11. Rigging a Foot Bank12. Finishing the Foot Bank Rig13. Adding Knee Controls14. Establishing Knee Association Curves15. Writing a Script to Generate Joints on each Selected Vertex16. Building the nSpine Joints17. Adding in a Spline IK / Initial Connections of the nSpine18. Creating Upperbody Control Curves19. Starting to Add Twisting to our nSpine20. Setting up the Initial Twisting in the nSpine21. Completing the Setup of the nSpine Locators22. Choosing a Stable Rotate Order for Control Objects23. Finishing the nSpine24. Building the Shoulder and Arm Chains25. Building Finger Joints26. Rigging Shoulder Controls27. Establishing IK Arm Controls30. Dynamically Parenting the Arm Controls29. Establishing Elbow Association Curves30. Dynamically Parenting the Arm Controls31. Setting up IK/FK Switch Controls32. Building FK Controls of the Arms33. Finishing the FK Arm Controls34. Dynamically Orienting the FK Arm Controls35. Creating a Tool that Parents Shape Nodes36. Starting on Finger Controls37. Finishing the Finger Controls38. Building Arm/Forearm Twist Joints39. Establishing Arm/Forearm Twist Controls40. Wrapping up our Forearm Twist Rig41. Rigging the Left Arm with an Auto Clavicle Feature42. Setting up an AutoClavicle on the Right Arm43. Building the Neck and Head Bones44. Establishing a Head Control45. Dynamically Parenting the Head Control46. Creating Facial Joints47. Renaming and the Facial Joints48. Building Facial Controls49. Adding Parent Controls to our Facial Rig50. Wrapping up the Facial Controls51. Blinking the Eyes52. Constructing Eye Controls53. Dynamically Parenting the Eye Controls54. Starting to Rig the Eyes55. Finishing the Left Eye56. Finishing the Right Eye57. Cleaning up the Scene / Adding a Global Control Curve58. Adding a Character Set59. Binding the Character / The Magic of Dual Quaternion Skinning60. Binding the Eyebrows / Blocking in Weights with Dual Quaternion Skinning61. Refining the Deformations of the Head62. Finishing the Weights on the Left Leg63. Wrapping up the Weights on the Left Hand64. Adding and Editing Influence Objects65. Finalizing the Left Arm's Weights66. Painting Weights on the Neck67. Double-checking Deformations68. Mirroring Skin Weights / Finishing the Character Rig